28 Goals for My 28th Year

Well it’s official as of today – I’ve entered my late 20s. Today’s my 27th birthday! It has been a great day, including receiving the best flowers, hands down, that I’ve ever received:

Kudos to the most amazing man ever, M! (That’s an edible arrangement if you can’t tell from the crappy iphone picture. Let me tell you, too, that the cantaloupe and pineapple on that sucker were the best I’ve had in a long long time.)

For my birthday I thought the best thing I could do was set goals for the upcoming year, so without further adieu I give you…

28 Goals for my 28th Year:

1. Lose 28 pounds – the only significance for the number of pounds it’s about where I want to be and it relates to the list
2. Get involved in a nonprofit
3. Pay off all of my credit cards (this may be the hardest of them all!)
4. Run a sub-2 hour half marathon (preferably at the Mini Marathon on May 8, 2010)
5. Blog  every day for the next year. I spent a lot of time considering whether this is a good goal but I think it’s probably one of the most important goals of them all. I am going to make YOU all hold me accountable for this one! I really have no excuse not to blog at least something every day because I can blog from my phone!
6. PR at one of the triathlons I ran this past year (I was going to do all three but I’m not sure I’ll run all three again that close together. I’m definitely hoping to run many more than 3 but not sure it’ll be those specific 3).
7. Place in the top 5 in my age group at a triathlon
8. Swim freestyle all of the swim portion of a triathlon (I usually do breast stroke)
9. Work out four times a week every week (my real goal is five times a week but I want to be reasonable since this is a year long goal and I know that some weeks may be tougher than others)
10. Go skiing
11. Ride in the Ride Across Indiana (R.A.I.N.) which is July 17, 2010 and is a 160 mile bike ride in one day!
12. Get into yoga and try to make it a habit along with stretching and using my foam roller – I’ve only minimally tried up to this point
13. Run an olympic distance triathlon (haven’t picked which one yet; was originally going to do the Indy Tri but that was so hot last year that I think it may not be the best choice)
14. Become more involved with local politics, including working on a campaign (I have one in mind already)
15. Complete 100 pushups program doing “regular” pushups
16. Figure out what I want to do with my career
17. Run a 5k with M
18. Run a sub 25-minute 5k
19. Run a sub 25-minute 5k in a sprint triathlon
20. Work on organization and tidiness
21. Learn more about HTML/web management
22. Limit eating out to twice per week
23. Dive into my book idea and read more fiction
24. Wear a bikini and feel confident in it!
25. Walk the dog regularly! (I almost feel bad admitting that we don’t do this very often…or at all)
26. Complete NROLW
27. Run a marathon, specifically Chicago on October 10, 2010 (the date is my guess of what it will be)!!!
28. Remember every day how lucky I am to have the amazing life I do!

Sorry for all of the exclamation points but that’s just me saying I think that specific goal is hard or exciting or both.  I plan to track my progress on these goals regularly in my daily updates, when applicable, as well as in a link to this original post (see link the sidebar on the right side of the homepage).  There are some other things I would love to see happen in the upcoming year, but which do not qualify as goals because I have little to do with whether they happen.

The past year of my life truly has been one of the best: I lost 30 pounds and kept it off (this is a first), I ran two half marathons in the same year, I crushed my 5k PR, I ran not one but three triathlons, I met the man of my dreams, and I started my career and have had what I think is a successful, albeit trying, first year. If the next year goes according to plan it will be even more amazing! Here’s to another great year!